


Soft Things

by rebelmeg



Series: Rebelmeg's Bucky Barnes Bingo 2019 [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Fluff, Gen, LITERALLY, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:08:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22031557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelmeg/pseuds/rebelmeg
Summary: Bucky has a secret.  Just a little one.Fic: BBB Flash square 4 - shoppingMoodboard: BBB square C4 - comfort clothes
Series: Rebelmeg's Bucky Barnes Bingo 2019 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1448674
Comments: 19
Kudos: 55
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2019





	Soft Things

**Author's Note:**

> The fabulous [feignedsobriquet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feignedsobriquet) was my beta for this fic!

[](http://imgbox.com/tuJ6GjjT)

It was… a secret, you might say. Not that he was doing anything wrong, he knew that. It was just something he liked to keep to himself.

Steve would laugh, probably, if he ever figured out the truth about the walks Bucky took nearly every day.

But what the punk didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and didn’t give him ammo to razz Bucky with either.

Bucky liked… well, window-shopping wasn’t it, because he bought things too. What he really liked was… feeling things. Everything. All the things. Anything he could get his hands on. He loved to feel the textures and temperatures and shapes and sizes with his own hands, and it probably would look really weird to anyone that paid attention to what he was doing.

Soft things were his favorite. Ever since breaking free from Hydra, he’d been forced to learn about everything. Himself, how to live, what to do, how other people did things. It had taken him a long time just to learn how to function on his own, much less learn what he liked. But once he’d gotten that far (far enough that he could take care of himself without having to treat his own wellbeing like a mission), he’d started to pay attention to what he liked.

He liked a lot of things now. He liked rainy days more than sunny, but he liked the heat better than the cold. He liked steak, maybe more than any other food, except for pizza. He loved candy, especially hard candies that he could suck on for ages, or try and break with his teeth, they always reminded him of his distantly recollected childhood. He liked blue best, and red second, and he loved the smell of popcorn.

And he really liked soft things, especially soft clothes. The thing was, most soft clothes weren’t made for men.

Bucky thought that was a load of crap, men liked soft things just as much as women did. Why didn't they get to have soft clothes too? He’d mentioned it once, when a few of the others were around, and Tony had said that they _did_ make soft things for men, he wore them all the time. But when Bucky researched the names of the brands Tony told him, the prices on everything made him have to sit down and think about something else for a while.

He liked going to big stores or to malls. There were so many people, so many shops, and while he didn’t particularly like crowds, he could blend in. If he wore a hat, and made sure to wear long-sleeves and a glove on his metal hand, most of the time people didn’t look twice at him. He could wander around for hours, if he wanted to, going in and out of stores at his leisure, reaching out with his right hand and touching everything. He couldn't remember ever getting to do that before, touch whatever he wanted, especially when the things he touched didn't hurt him.

The women’s clothing and baby section were his favorites. That was where they had the softest things. It was tricky, because if he got distracted and touched the wrong things, he would get stared at strangely. (Though he’d gone back and bought the silky, sheer bit of lingerie that felt like water falling over his hand. It was in the back of one of his dresser drawers, behind his socks and wrapped up in a plastic bag where nobody would find it.)

He felt the baby blankets and burp cloths that were made of the softest cotton, the women’s blouses and skirts made of delicate silk. Satin that felt cool against his skin, and plush fur that almost felt like nothing at all, it was so fine. 

He kept almost everything he bought in a box under his bed, and always made sure the door was locked before he got it out. He’d sit on his bed and bring out each piece, smoothing the fabric or fur or material gently between his fingers, rubbing it on his cheek (he was careful to shave very thoroughly before doing that). On bad days, when everything else felt wrong, he could lock his door and pull out his box of simple treasures, and let the soft textures bring him some amount of pleasure and peace.

Sometimes the men’s section would have something nice too, and he could nearly always wear that stuff. T-shirts that were soft, much softer than the regular ones, pajama pants made out of flannel that almost felt warm to the touch. There was even a leather jacket once, he’d felt it on accident, and nearly choked when he saw how much it cost. But he’d bought it anyway, terrified at the amount of money it represented, and wore it only on special occasions. The leather was butter-soft and a beautiful shade of brown, and it might have been his favorite item of clothing.

He’d discovered the soft things in a bedding and bathroom store once, running his hands over silk sheets with thread counts in the thousands, and Egyptian cotton towels that felt like clouds. He laundered all of those himself, meticulously following the washing instructions on the tags to keep them exactly as soft as they were.

It was silly, probably, the way he hid how much he loved the soft things he found. He’d had to hold in his excitement the first time a fluffy dog had come right up to him, begging to be petted, and he still remembered the way the body-warm, fuzzy fur had felt against his hand. He’d nearly adopted a cat once, when he’d passed an adoption event in the middle of the mall, because of how soft the cat’s multicolored fur had been when he’d reached out to pet it. It was only the fact that he’d also immediately started sneezing that kept him from adopting it on the spot.

He still took his walks, though, always ended up at a mall or a store, walking slowly through the displays of merchandise until he found something to touch. Collecting an almost absurd number of fuzzy socks, and finding an ostrich feather boa that he’d buried his whole face in, right in the middle of the store.

This was the kind of secret he didn’t mind keeping from anyone else. This could just be his. And at night when he went to sleep, holding a silk handkerchief or a plush stuffed animal or a supersoft cotton t-shirt against the skin at his throat, he didn’t have to hide his smile.


End file.
